It has been a long time since this could be said: Ohio's a clear standout in the labor market.CNNMoney.com notes that while 44 states saw their unemployment rates rise in July, Ohio was one of four states that held steady for the month. (Unemployment in Ohio stayed at 7.2%; it had dropped by exactly 0.1 percentage points in each month of 2012 prior to that.) Two states and the District of Columbia experienced declines in unemployment.The July unemployment data were “worse than the previous month, when far fewer states recorded increases in unemployment rates. In June, jobless rates rose in 27 states, while 11 states and the District of Columbia reported rate declines and 12 states had no change,” CNNMoney.com reports.But compared with a year ago, the national picture is better. Now, only three states have jobless rates of 10% or higher, “down significantly from 10 states and the District of Columbia last year,” according to the website.Overall, 44 states and the District of Columbia have lower jobless rates than a year ago. Ohio's jobless rate a year ago was more than 9%.North Dakota has the nation's lowest unemployment rate at a mind-boggling 3%, aided largely by an oil boom.Let's make some deals
The number of publicly announced staffing firm mergers and acquisitions in the United States rose to 20 in the second quarter of 2012 from 14 that closed in the first quarter, according to a new report, "Staffing mergers and acquisitions for 1H12 and M&A multiples," released by Staffing Industry Analysts, a sister publication of Crain's Cleveland Business.Overall, there were 62% more acquisitions in the first half of 2012 than the first half of 2011, the report found."In the second quarter of this year, the number of publicly announced acquisitions as well as the number of acquisitions reported in our own Pulse survey showed a moderate uptick from recent quarters," said Research analyst Timothy Landhuis in a statement."We also note that 12 percent of the deals that closed in the first half of this year involved legal temporary staffing firms, even though legal staffing firms make up only about one percent of all staffing firms," Mr. Landhuis said. "This indicates an unusually high level of interest in the legal segment."Keeping complaints in check
BusinessManagementDaily.com reports that Ohio employees filed 313 fewer Equal Employment Opportunity Commission discrimination charges last year than in 2010.The total — 3,137 complaints, covering issues from race discrimination to pay bias—represented 3.1% of all EEOC charges nationwide. Ohio has about 3.7% of the country's population, the website notes.The number of discrimination charges filed by Ohioans fell in each of the following categories:

Race: 1,112 charges filed

Retaliation: 1,032

Age: 897

Sex: 855

National origin: 137

Equal Pay Act: 29Ohio saw more 2011 charges for disability discrimination (928 charges filed), religious discrimination (109) and color bias (54).“Compared to other states, Ohio had a disproportionately large number of charges in just two areas, age discrimination (3.8% of all charges nationally) and violations of the Genetic Information Non¬¬dis¬¬crimi¬¬nation Act, where 10 Ohio filings accounted for 4.1% of all charges filed nationally,” the website reports.